Color the Machines People Dreamed Before They Could Fly.
Before the Wright brothers. Before the engine. Before anyone knew it was possible.
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Leonardo da Vinci filled thousands of pages with machines.
He designed a helicopter, a hang glider, a parachute, an ornithopter with wings that beat like a bird's — none of which he ever built. He was working, alone, five hundred years before anyone understood the physics of lift. The drawings were so detailed they could be constructed today. Some have been. They don't fly, but they almost do.
Da Vinci's aerial screw. Five hundred years before the helicopter.
The age of the dirigible.
Before the airplane won, the airship very nearly did.
The great rigid dirigibles — the Graf Zeppelin, the Hindenburg — were the size of ocean liners. They crossed the Atlantic in passenger comfort. They flew over the Arctic. They docked at mooring masts on the tops of skyscrapers. The Hindenburg disaster in 1937 ended the era in 34 seconds, but for three decades the airship seemed like the obvious future of travel. It was beautiful and impractical in almost exactly equal measure.
The Graf Zeppelin — the size of an ocean liner. Crossing the Atlantic in style.
"Every machine here was built by someone who had never seen a flying machine. They had only the idea."
Kitty Hawk.
The Wright Flyer flew for 12 seconds on December 17, 1903.
It covered 36 metres — less than half the wingspan of a 747. Orville was lying prone on the lower wing. Wilbur ran alongside. Neither of them had a university education. They had a bicycle shop and an obsession with a problem that had defeated everyone before them. Within five years, aircraft were crossing the English Channel. Within sixty-six years, one had reached the Moon.
12 seconds. 36 metres. The beginning of everything.
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Unlimited unique coloring pages on your iPad.
Da Vinci's ornithopter. Cayley's glider. The Montgolfier balloon. Dirigibles the length of ocean liners. The Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk. Every machine drawn from real historical reference — the actual engineering, the actual audacity.
$19 · $8 · Launch price· One-time · No subscription